How the Trump administration can stop the bullet train

California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated for the first 118 miles — as much as $3.6 billion more – according to a confidential federal report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. (Jan. 13, 2017)

California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated for the first 118 miles — as much as $3.6 billion more – according to a confidential federal report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. (Jan. 13, 2017)

The only kind of news the troubled $64 billion California bullet train project seems to generate is bad news. In January, a Federal Railroad Administration analysis was leaked that projected the initial 118-mile, $6.4 billion segment of the project would run 50 percent over budget. Then last week, a Los Angeles Times report revealed that the project’s price tag may continue to be pushed higher and higher by “the complex engineering needed for passenger safety.” It also offered an alarming warning from rail safety consultant Steven Ditmeyer that corners were being cut already on safety issues for budgetary and political reasons.

AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The jarring questions these reports raise about the project’s finances and management couldn’t come at a worse time for the rail authority and Gov. Jerry Brown, the bullet train’s most vocal backer. That’s because U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is being urged by California House Republicans not only to audit the project but also to reverse Obama administration decisions that exempted it from normal standards relating to the state’s use of about $3 billion in federal funds.

One of those decisions was explicit and aboveboard, if dubious: a 2012 agreement that allowed the state to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding without matching state spending. Rep. Jeff Dunham, R-Turlock, and other bullet train critics have long argued that this waiver is directly in contradiction to decades of precedents under which the federal government requires matching state spending on big projects to lock in states’ commitments to finish what they start.

Another of those decisions was unstated and unforgivable: the Federal Railroad Administration’s decision to ignore rules adopted in June 2009 that say federal funding from the economic stimulus bill adopted earlier that year can only go to high-speed projects that have been subject to “rigorous analysis” that confirms their “reasonableness of financial estimates” and “quality of planning process.” These rules should have excluded a rail project whose first segment ends in an almond orchard northwest of Bakersfield and which has never had a credible long-term financing plan.

If Chao decided California should immediately match the federal funds to show its long-term commitment to finishing the project, that decision would be amply justified. The same holds for any attempts to claw back federal grants from California on the grounds that the state is not pursuing a viable project, contrary to its representations.

But the downside of such decisions is that they would be spun as President Donald Trump lashing out at the state that gave Hillary Clinton such a lopsided victory on Nov. 8 that she won the national popular vote. A better approach would be for Chao to order the bullet train audit sought by California House Republicans. If the audit’s conclusions were as harsh as eight years of ugly headlines and legislative analyst’s reports suggest, then federal support for the project should — and probably would — end.

If that happens, Brown and the rail authority will probably howl. But it’s the people of California who should be howling — because even though the governor has assailed bullet train critics as “fearful men” and “NIMBYs,” he never figured out how to make the project anything more than a pipe dream.